Sharing my experience here:
I tend to favour simple and cheap products that have an active ingredient that have at least some amount of research backing up its effectiveness, and that are often recommended by dermatologists. Fancier and expensive products seem like snake oil to me, but I could be wrong on this. My intuition is that less products and less chemicals on your face is probably better than more, and I am quite suspicious of the lengthy multi-step regimens some people subscribe to.
I currently use the following:
I felt a bit validated when I saw that Bryan Johnson also uses CeraVe products, heh.
I change my sheets often, so I tend to skip using a cleanser in the morning due to laziness. If you don't change your bedsheets at least once a week, you might want to do cleanser in the morning as well.
Highlighting the existence of different retinoids is good. I have used retinol serums and a tretinoin cream (not at the same time). Retinol products are the most popular in the retinoid skincare category, and are sold over the counter, so reading specifically about them might be worthwhile.